Documenting a meeting through meeting minutes often plays an important part in organizational activities. Minutes can be used during a meeting to facilitate discussion and questions among the meeting participants. In the period shortly after the meeting, it may be useful to look at meeting minutes to review details and act on decisions. Over the long term, meeting minutes constitute part of the organizational memory, providing a clear record of the organizations goals and accomplishments.
New capabilities enabled by digital multimedia technology provide instant and far reaching communication of a variety of information types. This can include digital representations of traditional presentation materials, such as slides, charts, or diagrams, as well as more advanced digital multimedia formats such as video and audio. Different digital multimedia formats can be used to convey a variety of information. Slides contain text, images and meaningful layout information. Audio and video can pick up details that are difficult to catch, capture gestures, nonverbal activity, and show the context of other information. Internet content may also be employed during a meeting.
In order to better utilize digital multimedia technology, it is desirable to correlate meeting minutes with these various types of digital multimedia information. For example, meeting minutes could be linked to a video recording to retrieve and playback interesting points of a meeting. By working on the Internet, meeting minutes can be created and accessed anywhere.
Despite the advances offered by digital multimedia technology, most people prefer text notes. Text notes, especially when typewritten, are easier to quickly scan and review than audio or video notes. In an attempt to combine the usability of text notes with the richness of digital multimedia information, several different input systems have been developed. These include devices such as the CrossPad, palmtop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), pen-based notebook computers, and common laptop computers. Unfortunately, handwriting recognition, user interface design, display technology, wireless interface issues, and battery performance are currently too immature to make note taking practical with pen-based systems. For novice users, only ordinary paper or laptop computers are suitable input devices.
There are few text-based note taking applications designed for recording meeting minutes. WEmacs is a text note taking application based on the GNU Emacs editor. Notes entered into a WEmacs system are instantly “beamed” onto a shared display, such as a Xerox LiveBoard. The LiveBoard is a digital version of a traditional whiteboard. Users can write or draw directly onto the LiveBoard with an input device. The LiveBoard displays graphics corresponding to the motions of the input device. The resulting graphics appear similar to handwritten notes on a traditional whiteboard. Unlike a traditional whiteboard, the contents of the LiveBoard display can be saved as an image file. When used in conjunction with a WEmacs application, the LiveBoard receives additional text notations from the WEmacs application. The LiveBoard displays these additional text notations together with the “handwritten” notations. When the contents of a LiveBoard display contents are saved, the text notations added by WEmacs and the handwritten notations are saved together as part of the same image file.
Because text notations from Wemacs and handwritten notes are merged into a single file, a user cannot access the text notations apart from the handwritten notations. This shortcoming makes WEmacs is ill suited for summarizing the content of a meeting. Additionally, the WEmacs user interface assigns functions to special characters, making its operation more complicated. Starting and ending a session in WEmacs is also complicated.
The Where Were We system (W3), which is related to WEmacs, is another text-based notation system. Unlike WEmacs, W3 supports making annotations to a video recording during a live event. However, W3 does not support other digital multimedia formats commonly used in meetings, such as slides. Like WEmacs, the interface for W3 is also complicated.
The Classroom 2000 system is a PDA note taking system. In this system, slides are pre-loaded into each PDA. These slides are also displayed on a LiveBoard. Note taking is done on the PDA device. This system is not text based and its complexity makes it unsuitable for novices. Since this system requires the use of PDA devices, the overall cost of the system is increased.
There are several systems designed specifically for annotation of video information. These systems allow a user to attach a notation to a portion of a video stream. Examples of such systems are Microsoft™ MRAS, Marquee, and Vanna.
Microsoft™ MRAS a video annotation system based on ActiveX™ technology, which only works in Microsoft Windows™ Internet Explorer™ environment. MRAS is designed for asynchronous annotation of a single multimedia source by large numbers of users. However, MRAS is ill-suited for the task of creating meeting minutes in real time. When a user wishes to add an annotation, the video stream is paused. This makes it unsuitable for adding annotations during a live event, where the video cannot be paused. Additionally, the user interface for MRAS is not designed for use during a live event. MRAS requires the user to manually request to add an annotation. Then, the user must enter the annotation, adjust the timing of the annotation, select a category to organize the annotation, and enter an e-mail address where the annotation will be sent. This process must be repeated for each annotation. Because of the number of steps required to add an annotation to a single multimedia source, MRAS makes it difficult to use in a live setting, where annotations must be added rapidly. Further, MRAS only supports adding annotations to a single multimedia source at a time.
Another video annotation system is the FXPAL Notelook system. The Notelook system is not text based. Users take freeform notes on pen-based computers in digital ink. The digital ink strokes correspond to the user's handwriting. Users can then incorporate images from the video sources of the room activity and presentation material into these freeform notes. The images and digital ink strokes are indexed to the video recording for retrieval. The Notelook system requires training to use and is not designed for novices. The handwritten notes are more difficult to read than formatted text. Further, unlike text, which can be handled by virtually any software application, digital ink strokes require specially adapted software. Additionally, Notelook requires the use of pen based computers; these computers significantly increase the system cost.
Creating multimedia meeting minutes is a difficult challenge. Current multimedia note taking applications face a number of problems. Multimedia note taking applications should be simple to operate. Taking notes in a live event requires the user to pay close attention and sometimes participate in the meeting in addition to formulating notes. This makes it difficult for a user to fiddle with the complex controls associated with a video annotation system, or to perform tasks such as labeling or organizing information.
Additionally, multimedia note taking applications should be easy to learn. Interface devices such as pen-based notebook computers and PDAs require intensive training to be used effectively. Systems with non-intuitive interfaces cannot be widely adopted without training a large number of individuals to serve as designated note takers. This problem is further compounded in meetings held by less technically inclined individuals. Although multimedia note taking can benefit any type of meeting, less technically inclined individuals will be reluctant to use a non-intuitive note taking application.
Further, multimedia note taking applications should support rapid interaction. A user may have to make a number of different notations within a relatively short time frame during the meeting. In video annotation systems, the video can be paused and replayed, giving users ample time to operate a relatively complicated user interface and to perform labeling or organizing tasks. In contrast, a live meeting cannot be held up to allow a note taker to finish processing notations. Because note taking applications with non-intuitive or complex interfaces will hinder a users efforts to enter notes rapidly, they are impractical for real time note taking. Therefore, note taking applications should be able to quickly receive and process a number of notations in rapid succession.
Multimedia note taking applications should also support a large number and variety of multimedia formats. During a meeting, multimedia information can be introduced in a variety of formats, such as audio, video, slides. Note taking applications such as WEmacs have sparse support for different multimedia formats. Moreover, a number of different multimedia formats may be used simultaneously during a meeting. For example, in a video conference, video sources at each location record the participants. In conjunction with multiple video sources, presentation materials may also be used. Video annotation systems such as MRAS are only capable of handling one multimedia source at a time. Such a system is ill-suited for simultaneously attaching notations to many different multimedia sources. Therefore, it is desirable to have a multimedia note taking application adept at handling a large number of multimedia sources in a wide variety of multimedia formats.
Portability is another concern for multimedia note taking applications. Many current applications are limited to a specific operating environment. For instance, WEmacs is primarily designed for a UNIX environment. MRAS depends on technology proprietary to the Microsoft Windows™ operating system and the Microsoft Internet Explorer™ web browser. Additionally, many systems require exotic input and display hardware. These restrictions severely limit the widespread deployment of current note taking applications.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a multimedia note taking application which is simple to operate, is easy to learn, allows rapid interaction, supports a number of different multimedia formats simultaneously, and is easily deployed on a wide range of operating environments.